Nokia offers up 10 Gbps HFC demo Nokia Networks has applied the paddles to the chest of cable broadband, pumped in the volts, and sent it sprinting at 10 Gbps. While the company says the proof-of-concept work demonstrates the viability of CableLabs' DOCSIS 3.1 roadmap, it's not yet working directly with the group. The company showed off a demo of its XG- …
They won't offer it because consumers aren't demanding it. But if you get 1 gigabit down and 100 Mb up that's better than 100 Mb symmetrical so I don't see the problem. Even those of us who work from home and occasionally need to do big uploads likely download a lot more data than they upload...
They aren't going to replace all the splitters, taps and amps just to squeeze more bandwidth out of the plant when they can get more than they need out of the current HFC plant. Nokia's demo is interesting, but irrelevant. No consumer needs or will in my lifetime need 10 gigabit service (note to anyone who thinks I'm wrong and are ready to quote "640K is enough for anyone" at me: tell me the use case for even 1 gigabit service at home)
The only market for 10 gigabit service is businesses, but I think the cable company can be bothered to extend their fiber line that last 200 meters for a business willing to pay for 10 gigabit symmetric service and shouldn't be using DOCSIS 3.1.
100Mbit up. You're high fucking larious.
Look, I want 25 Mbit symmetrical. Soothing our telcos won't offer even for those residences that have fibre to the home. The best we can get is from the cable provider: 10 Mbit up for $150 a month, and you'll only get better than 8 Mbit of that every third Tuesday after sacrificing a goat and standing on one foot for an hour.
If you want more than 10 Mbit up you have to jump waaaaaaaaaay up. Quad bonded (2x DSL and 2x DOCSIS) from a third party provider can get you 15 Mbit up, but the line rental to the third party is $300 a month; to stay in business they have to charge over $500 a month, and they can't get faster than a theoretical 40 Mbit (in practice about 20 Mbit) up, because 4 devices is the max a residence can have with out current wiring structure.
So then we're on to "if you have fibre connected to the residence and want a commercial package". First off, most of the providers will flat out refuse to sell you business fibre packages to a residence even if you happen to have FTTH. If you do manage to sweet talk a third party provider into doing it (be prepared for killer latency on that!) you're talking starting at about $1800 a month for 50 Mbit up. If you kiss a lot of toads.
What's the use case? Working from home mostly. Some hobbyist stuff. Almost all related to video. Pushing videos up to Youtube for clients. Working on files between individuals who all work from home. Backing up your SMB's files to a cloud provider. Pushing images to your VPS. Video conferencing.
Upstream matters. I don't give a rat's ass about 1Gbit. But we're so far from even 50 Mbit here that it's stupid. I probably won't see 100Mbit up for residential users for less than an inflation-adjusted $500 a month in my lifetime. And that's a goddamned crime.
Backing up your SMB's files to a cloud provider
I have often wondered how "cloud backup" was viable for SMBs, or even domestic users with a lot of media to protect, simply from the point of view of time to upload (though assuming incrementals this is less of a problem than it might be), and then time to download the whole lot in the case of an emergency full restore.
At home I have ADSL2+ with sync speeds around 8Mb/s down, 1Mb/s up (not bad for a distant semi-rural exchange, though throughput is less) and at the moment just over 1TB of data that's worth saving. Saving that to a remote server would be rather slow.
It does begin to become viable at network speeds of 50Mbit/s and over, I suppose. In the UK even the much-maligned BT offers "up to" 76 / 19 for £40 per month on its "business Infinity" product (a fibre-to-the-cabinet product). Similar packages are available from third parties, for example The Phone Co-Op, which is a reseller.
M.
(linked to TPC not because I'm a customer - though I am - but because the website is much "cleaner" than the BT one)
Where do you live that you have such crappy service? You mention Canada, are they really worse than the US? I've been able to get 40/20 VDSL2 (unbonded, uncapped) here for almost a decade now, and my cable company now offers speeds of up to 150/20. A lot of people won't have my DSL speeds, but I'm sure a majority in the US can get as fast or faster speeds from their cable provider. What's the holdup in Canada?
OK thanks, I'm interested to see it! Everyone always complains about the state of broadband in the US, and obviously it isn't without its problems (particularly cost in areas with low competition) and some countries are a lot better off but mostly those that have density on another level compared to the US. It is hardly shocking that Singapore is much better off when you compare its density with that of the US or anywhere in the US for that matter other than maybe Manhattan and SF.
Canada, of course, is on a whole other level of low density even compared to the US, especially outside the cities and more than 50 miles north of the border. Probably comparable to the Australian outback in a lot of ways - another country that seems to have broadband issues, at least if the number of Reg articles written around people complaining about the state of Australian broadband is anything to go by.
Is irrelevant. I dont need to eat chocolate but I do.
Thise saying its pointless would probably have argued that colour TV was pointless back in the day.
Put the tech out there and people will find a use for it.
Blockchain technology, home based high frequency trading, lossless video streaming to multiple endpoints in the home simultaneously...there are loads of uses for this.
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